Review By Steve Angelly - September 28, 2005 Edited by Jonathan Martini
INTRODUCTION
In November, 2004, NVIDIA announced a cross-license agreement with Intel that covered multiple product lines and generations. NVIDIA received the licensing needed to bring the nForce4 platform to Intel processors. As such, the Intel platform also had a solution which could benefit from NVIDIA's advanced 3D graphics performance
enhancing technology.
MSI P4N Diamond
Back in April,
Mike previewed the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition and came to the following conclusion:
"Although I have only used this system during the past six days, I threw a lot at the SLI setup by using 16X antialiasing, high quality texture filtering, and resolutions up to 2048x1536 (in Half-Life 2 no less). The system has been stable and the end results are impressive. Hard-core gamers that prefer Intel processors need to look no further than NVIDIA's nForce4 SLI to deliver the best gaming experience on the market today."
Today nV News takes a look at a motherboard born of the recent NVIDIA-Intel relationship; MSI's P4N Diamond. This robust example of nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition sports many features sought after by gamers and computing enthusiasts alike.
Limited Edition Logo
The NForce 4 SLI Intel Edition chipset brings a lot to the table as it supports four SATA2 connectors, two IDE ports, 10 USB 2.0 ports, two PCI-Express x16 interconnects for SLI, Gigabit Ethernet, Realtech AC'97 audio and dual channel DDR2 667+. The chipset supports the various Intel LGA775 CPUs including the recently announced Dual-Core 8 Series and 1066MHz FSB-capable Extreme Editions. The Intel edition makes use of the more traditional northbridge / southbridge chipset configuration instead of a single MCP as found on the AMD NF4 boards.
MSI P4N Diamond Motherboard
NF4 SLI Northbridge
NF4 SLI Southbridge
FEATURES
The main features of the P4N Diamond include the following:
Complete support for all Intel LGA775 processors, including 533, 800 or 1066FSB bus speeds
The following items came bundled with the motherboard package. I received a utility disk, with all required drivers, a Creative Sound Blaster Live! installation disk, floppies with NVIDIA C19+MCP04 SATA Raid driver and Silicon Image SATA driver for Sil3132, and the P4N Diamond User's Manual.
Hardware Accessories
SPECIAL NOTE: The card & antenna are only available in some specific areas. My area was not one of the fortunate locations.
